


Thankful

by aries_taurus



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e07 Ina Paha (If Perhaps), Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2649908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aries_taurus/pseuds/aries_taurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away, but he’s thankful. He’s alive and Wo Fat isn’t. He still misses his father, badly, but he doesn’t have to go through this alone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thankful

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, another 5.07 tag, my second. I'm not 100% happy with it but I wanted it out before 5.08 airs so.
> 
> It's Steve/Danny friendship, pure H/C self satisfaction.
> 
> I don't have a beta so let me know if I've goofed.

He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know _when_ it is. It’s 2010 and 2014 all at once. He doesn’t know Danny but he does and his father’s long dead and buried but he’s just sat with him five minutes ago and the ache of loss is bright and sharp, painful and real, immediate. He can’t help the tears flowing from his eyes. Wo Fat’s dead, finally, _finally_ , can’t hurt him anymore but it feels like a dream/hallucination. The burning pain on the side of his head makes it real but… he’s just not sure. He just can’t help the tears, can’t hold them in.

He knows no one on his team cares that he’s weeping, but this is private. No one can see. Not… not like this. He just misses his father _so damn much_.

His thoughts cut out like static and he’s back in the here and now, hurting in every possible way. There’s an ambulance and he gets into it, lying on the gurney with a groan that’s both agony and relief. The warm blanket wrapped around him feels like protection, like he’s sheltered from all of _this._

The EMT asks questions, tells him what he’s doing. The BP cuff, the bandages, the stethoscope, the oxygen mask. He doesn’t flinch, knows the people around him now won’t hurt him.

He doesn’t stop crying the whole ride in, can’t stop the tears rolling down his face. He _can’t_ , doesn’t have the strength left to force them to stop.

There’s a lull in the activity around him and he’s left alone behind a curtain. He draws up his knees, curls over them and just gives in, lets the sorrow take over. He’s trying to be quiet, but sounds escape his throat.

Danny’s there, again, a warm hand on his neck, a thumb rubbing gently at the sore spot they kept injecting him in, whispering things he can’t really hear.

He loses time, loses the thread of reality, like sand through his fingers.

\-----------------------------

The doctors and nurses are careful. They tell him what they’re doing, do their best not to startle him. They understand his pain and confusion and emotional state (physical, emotional and psychological _trauma_ , but no one says the word).

They run tests, don’t know what he was given, not yet, can’t give him anything for the pain or the nausea, the hallucinations, the blurred vision, can’t give him an antibiotic yet, the risk of interaction with unknown drugs too high. He nods, accepts an IV to help with the dehydration, doesn’t protest admission. He doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to face the empty house and its ghosts and memories that feel too fresh and too real and not enough.

\---------

He keeps dozing off, keeps startling awake.

It’s like there’s static in his head, his brain firing off at random, bouncing between real and not and the longer it goes on, the less he’s sure where reality starts and ends.

He sits up on the bed, buries his head in his hands, hisses as his muscles cramp and ache.

Danny’s sleeping in the recliner in the corner and it’s the only thing that holds him to this reality, to the real world. To what he knows is the real world, not wishful thinking, not the happier world in his head.

He shivers, cold and suddenly too hot, cold sweats bursting all over his skin. He gasps, nausea washing through him like a storm surge. He lunges for the basin on the rolling table by the bed and retches over it, groaning loudly as his head spins with the effort.

“Hey, you’re okay babe. You’re all right,” Danny says. He hears movement as he pants and whimpers through the horrendous twisting in his gut. There’s nothing to bring up but his body seems intent on trying over and over again.

“I’m putting something on your neck. It’ll help a bit.”

“’Kay. Gurhhh…” He cries out in pain as his innards rebel again, twisting painfully, spasm after empty spasm until he brings up a glop of bile and a mouthful of spit. He knows, _knows_ it’s just the drugs working their way out of his system but it _sucks_ and it _hurts_ , and he’s _so. Fucking. Tired._

He wants this to end. He’s had enough of the pain, in his body, in his soul, in his heart.

The cool cloth on his neck helps with the nausea but it does nothing for the tears pooling in his eyes again. There’s static in his head and all he wants is to feel his father’s arms around him again, lay his head on his shoulder and let go, let it all go, like he did when he was six years old with a scraped knee.

The urge to throw up fades so he drops the basin on the bed and pushes it away and once more buries his face in his hands, but he can’t hold back the tears. Danny’s hand rubs his arm and the need to lean into the touch and grab his arm and just lose it is unbearably strong.

“Shh, shh, you’re all right,” Danny says softly and fuck, he’s _had it._

He shoves Danny off and screams. “NO! I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY, OKAY? I AM NOT OKAY! How much do I have to take to be allowed to not be okay huh?”

He lifts his head to stare at Danny, barely aware of the two nurses suddenly crowding the door but he has to close his eyes, the room tilting and swaying, the lights fizzing in and out.

“You have every right not to be okay. You’ve been handed more crap than anybody deserves in ten lifetimes. You’re fully entitled to a meltdown. So go ahead. Scream, cry, whatever you need. I’m there, babe. Just tell me what you need. We’re all right guys, we’re just blowing off some steam. We don’t need company, thanks.”

His anger doesn’t last, deflates and melts back into unspeakable grief again.

“Okay, okay,” he mutters. He’s okay, has to make himself okay. He can’t let this, _him,_ win. The bastard is _dead_ with a bullet exploded in his brain, can’t come back ever again, can’t hurt him. Not anymore. But the hurt is there, and he feels all of the pain that fucking bastard put him through in the last four years.

It’s the drugs. He knows it is. Because he can lock it down, push it back, deal, when they’re not there.

His dad’s dead. Gone. Four years.

A sob escapes.

He doesn’t exactly know what is still running through his veins, suspects from the smells, the sensations in his veins, the burn in his muscles. BZ gas in the white chamber. Sodium amythal mixed with ketamine in his neck. Diazepam, or maybe midazolam or both in the IV.

He presses his palms to his eyes and rocks back and forth, muttering words under his breath, trying to hold himself together because he doesn’t know how he’s made it the last four years, doesn’t know how he’s lived with this because at the moment, it’s too much to contain.

The pain’s so raw, so deep, he can’t not scream with it.

The sound he hears coming from his own throat is more wounded animal than man.

“What can I do, babe, tell me what I can do,” Danny pleads in his ear, soft, gentle.

He wants _that_. He wants his father to be here. He wants to be weak, wants not to have to be strong, wants to be held comforted, _anything_ not to feel like this. He wants the drug-induced illusions to be real. He wants to feel his dad there, his arms around him. He wants all of this to be the nightmare. He wants the phantom world in his head where everyone is happy to be real.

Because right now, what he feels is terribly and totally _alone_. Alone and hurting and abandoned.

“You’re not alone. I’m right here, babe. Right here. C’mere. It’s okay. You’re gonna be all right and I’m here, okay?”

There are arms around him, warm and solid so he grabs on and holds tight as the emotions overflow and turn into a squall; violent but short lived. He’s too exhausted for this to last.

Fatigue sucks him under and for once, he sleeps and doesn’t dream.

 

\---------

He wakes in stages this time, mind clear, or at least clearer, body stiff and aching, his head and neck by far the most painful. His mouth is thick and gummy and he knows the moment he moves, the barely-there nausea will swell. He licks dry, chapped lips and swallows, coughing when his throat sticks. God, this is by far the worst hangover he’s ever had.

“Hold on. Here.”

He cracks his eyes open and Danny’s there, with a plastic cup with a straw.

“Danny,” he croaks.

“Yeah it’s me. Drink some water.”

He lifts a hand to the straw, guides it to his mouth and drinks a few sips before sinking onto his pillow again.

“Better?”

He grunts some sort of acknowledgment.

“Doc was in a couple hours ago. Drugs are mostly out of your system. So how’re you feeling?”

He swallows and takes a moment to take stock. Besides the obvious drug hangover, he feels sore, stiff and aching. The bullet graze on the side of his head burns and his breathing rattles in his lungs.

Somehow though, he feels calm, composed. It’s like that dream world where he got to see his dad, and the collision with reality that bought back that incredibly powerful feeling of loss allowed him to finally acknowledge that loss and forced him to grieve, at long last.

He feels emotionally worn out but strangely at peace, like the island feels after a heavy storm; a little battered bur cleansed.

“Steve?”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I got the worst hangover ever and I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus, but… I think I’m gonna be okay.”

“That’s uh, good to hear. Because let me tell ya… when… When I walked into that room… I knew Wo Fat was dead. I mean, that hole in the middle of his forehead and the brain matter everywhere, it was kinda hard to miss. But you… Man I thought you were dead too. And then…”

“And then, I ask you about my dad.”

“Yeah. Man, you don’t know how much I wish I’d gotten there in time. To save your dad, I mean.”

“I know.”

There’s a bit of silence and he knows Danny wants to ask what happened.

He doesn’t mind telling the story. He knows he has to, that facing it will help him move on.

He wishes he could make Danny understand that he’s okay, that yes, the ordeal affected him but that he’s trained to deal with it, really deal with it. He knows he’s not immune to consequences, to PTSD, ASD and things like it. He’s a realist.

He also knows he’s doing okay. He’s … good at dealing with this because he knows it’s over, especially since Wo Fat is dead, for good, for real.

Freddie… Freddie was different. The guilt at leaving him behind ate at him, made him question everything, made him quit on a whim and start this… whole 5-0 thing.

He’s faced that guilt, those regrets. Grover had forced him into it a bit but he’s never done anything he wasn’t willing to, so yeah, Lou may have steered him towards it but he’d gone in freely.

He knows there will be nightmares. He knows he’s hyper vigilant, knows it’ll take him a while to not flinch when a needle gets close.

But he’s okay. Overall, and with a bit of time, he’ll be good as new. Especially with his friends.

“I’m okay, Danny,” he says eventually.

“Really? You are. After you screaming your head off saying you weren’t okay just a few hours ago?”

“Last night.. okay, fine but I am now. I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I keep meaning it. Listen… What Wo Fat did? It hurt. It hurt a lot. But it’s over and this time, he can’t hurt me again, ever. So I’ll heal. And… I got friends to help me when I need it. I got this great best friend who keeps badgering me, won’t take my shit and will make sure I’m okay. He’ll even let me cry on his shoulder when I forget my dad’s been gone for four years.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Thanks for being there. For getting me out. For… catching me when I fall. _That_ ’s what makes it all okay in the end. My Ohana. Wo Fat tried to pretend he was my brother, but he wasn’t. You are. You and Chin and Kono and Lou and Max and Kamekona… You guys are my family.”

“Thanks babe,” Danny says, a low growl of emotion burnishing his words. “Wait, what? Brother?”

“Yeah.”

He tells the tale and Danny listens. He maybe laughs and maybe tears up a few times and when he’s done, Danny’s quiet, staring at the floor.

“Danny?”

“Yeah. I… God Steve… I… Man I don’t know what to say. I mean… Why the hell aren’t you losing your shit right now? I would be.”

“I told you. It’s over. I’m not… fine, not right now. But I will be in time. Thanks to my family. To you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Danny nods. “I lost one brother and I thought I’d lost another when I saw you lying there on that floor. I’m glad I didn’t. That is what I’m thankful for.”

Steve smiles. Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away, but he’s thankful too. He’s alive and Wo Fat isn’t. He still misses his father, badly, but he doesn’t have to go through this alone.

“Mahalo Kaikua`ana. I’m thankful too.”

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> So? how was it? I know very few people read me, but I'd like to know. Thanks for reading and commenting. You don't know how much this means to me.


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